References, with Abstracts

Below we have included some general reference materials as well as other specific references for the material on this site, with abstracts. Where an abstract was not present, a paragraph of the article was quoted.

General References

Visual Knowledge Project (Georgetown University)– The Visible Knowledge Project (VKP) Working Concepts Glossary provides an introduction to some of the terms VKP members may encounter in books and articles they read in the context of their VKP activities. The broader public will find the glossary a helpful guide to terms they might encounter in many contemporary discussions of student learning in higher education settings.

References for…

• An Evaluation Toolkit
• Observing and evaluating groupwork
• Guide for observation and evaluation by colleagues
• Questions for your students about your teaching
• Objectives: what are they?

An Evaluation Toolkit

1. L. Dee Fink. A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning. Available from Fink’s website. — develops the idea that the objectives of a course should be linked to how the course is taught, and frames objectives as “What would distinguish students who have taken this course from students who have not?” — This model includes attention to components that are present in most all models of instructional design, e.g., learning goals, learning activities, methods of assessment, etc.; however, it goes beyond other models and is distinct from them in four (4) ways:
   • It emphasizes the need for the components to be aligned or integrated with each other, and shows how to achieve this.
   • It is capable of showing where several major ideas on good teaching (e.g. active learning, educative assessment, teaching strategies) fit into the overall design of courses.
   • It offers specific criteria for determining whether individual components and the whole course have been designed well or not.
   • In terms of its general structure, it is an interactive model rather than a linear model.

Guide for Observation and Evaluation and Colleagues

1. J. Brophy, J. Alleman. Activities as Instructional Tools: A Framework for Analysis and Evaluation. Educational Researcher, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 9-23. — used Appendix in writing questions for content choice and classroom management – Issues relating to the design, selection, and evaluation of learning activities have been relatively neglected in educational research and scholarship. This article identifies some fundamental questions in need of scholarly attention, reviews recent research findings, and then offers a conceptual analysis and a list of principles that might be used as a tool for designing, selecting, or assessing activities.
2. B. G. Davis. Tools for Teaching. Copyright 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. – used in writing sections on content choice, content organization, and classroom management – A rich compendium of classroom-tested strategies and suggestions designed to improve the teaching practice of beginning, midcareer, and senior faculty members. Forty-nine teaching tools cover both traditional tasks–writing a course syllabus, delivering a lecture–and newer, broader concerns, such as responding to diversity and using technology.
3. G. Leinhardt. Development of an expert explanation: an analysis of a sequence of subtraction lessons. Cognition and Instruction 4(4), 225-282. — used “features of a good explanation” in writing questions for content choice — This article documents the teaching and learning that occurred during an 8-day unit on subtraction with regrouping in an expert teacher’s second-grade classroom. Students in this study were found to be not only highly skilled in computation at the end of the sequence, but also to have, in some cases, unusual skill in solving problems beyond the range of instruction. Detailed analyses of the expert lessons that led to such high levels of student performance and understanding focused both on the explanations the teacher provided and on students’ knowledge growth throughout the sequence. Two aspects of the teacher’s explanations were analyzed: the subject-matter content and the explanational plan.
4. D. Sawada, M. Piburn, et al. Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) Training Guide. Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers, Arizona State University, ACEPT Technical Report No. IN00-2. – used in writing questions on classroom management — The Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) is an observational instrument that can be used to assess the degree to which mathematics or science instruction is “reformed.” It embodies the recommendations and standards for the teaching of mathematics and science that have been promulgated by professional societies of mathematicians, scientists and educators. [...]
   The instrument draws on the following sources:
   • National Council for the Teaching of Mathematics. Curriculum and Evaluation Standards (1989), Professional Teaching Standards (1991), and Assessment Standards (1995).
   • National Academy of Science, National Research Council. National Science Education Standards (1995).
   • American Association for the Advancement of Science, Project 2061. Science for All Americans(1990), Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy(1993).

Group work?

1. B. G. Davis. Tools for Teaching. Copyright 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. – used for writing questions on managing group work – A rich compendium of classroom-tested strategies and suggestions designed to improve the teaching practice of beginning, midcareer, and senior faculty members. Forty-nine teaching tools cover both traditional tasks–writing a course syllabus, delivering a lecture–and newer, broader concerns, such as responding to diversity and using technology.
2. B. J. Millis. Cooperative Learning Structures. Copyright 2008, University of Texas at Austin. Available online. – used as dictionary for many, many group work structures and principles of group work — Some of the most commonly used structures in higher education are discussed in this section. These structures need to be carefully planned and executed, but they don’t require the presence of permanently formed groups in your class. The activities involve student interactions and active learning, thus promoting deep learning, but they can be organized quickly.

Questions for your students about your teaching

1. R. Mitchell. Learning Behavior Surveys. Teaching and Learning Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available online. – linked as a best practice for evaluating different pedagogical models — We have developed three surveys—the Small Group Survey, the Heat Exchanger Survey, and the WebLab Survey—to assess the effectiveness of several different pedagogical innovations with which we have experimented. We group these surveys under the umbrella term Learning Behavior Surveys because in each case we have asked students to identify the extent to which a new pedagogical practice or technology has (or has not) impacted their learning. Some educational researchers maintain that student reports of their own learning are valid sources of data that can stand in for more direct measurements of performance.

Objectives: what are they?

1. San Diego State University Student Learning Outcomes Committee. — gives guidelines for setting objectives — The mission of the Student Learning Outcomes Committee (SLO) is to facilitate the assessment of student learning outcomes on campus. The purpose of assessing student outcomes is to improve teaching, learning, and academic advising at the individual, course, program, and institutional level. Student learning includes cognitive development, skills development, and personal development.
2. L. Dee Fink. A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning. Available from Fink’s website. — develops the idea that the objectives of a course should be linked to how the course is taught, and frames objectives as “What would distinguish students who have taken this course from students who have not?” — This model includes attention to components that are present in most all models of instructional design, e.g., learning goals, learning activities, methods of assessment, etc.; however, it goes beyond other models and is distinct from them in four (4) ways:
   • It emphasizes the need for the components to be aligned or integrated with each other, and shows how to achieve this.
   • It is capable of showing where several major ideas on good teaching (e.g. active learning, educative assessment, teaching strategies) fit into the overall design of courses.
   • It offers specific criteria for determining whether individual components and the whole course have been designed well or not.
   • In terms of its general structure, it is an interactive model rather than a linear model.